With such piteous words and tears did they beseech the king, but they heard no pitiful answer in return."If," said Agamemnon, "you are sons of Antimachus,who once at a council of Trojans proposed that Menelaus and Ulysses, who had come to you as envoys, should be killed and not suffered to return,you shall now pay for the foul iniquity of your father."
As he spoke he felled Pisander from his chariot to the earth, smiting him on the chest with his spear,so that he lay face uppermost upon the ground.Hippolochus fled, but him too did Agamemnon smite;he cut off his hands and his head—which he sent rolling in among the crowd as though it were a ball.There he let them both lie, and wherever the ranks were thickest thither he flew, while the other Achaeans followed. Foot soldiers drove the foot soldiers of the foe in rout before them, and slew them; horsemen did the like by horsemen, and the thundering tramp of the horses raised a cloud of dust from off the plain.King Agamemnon followed after, ever slaying them and cheering on the Achaeans. As when some mighty forest is all ablaze—the eddying gusts whirl fire in all directions till the thickets shrivel and are consumed before the blast of the flame—even so fell the heads of the flying Trojans before Agamemnon son of Atreus,and many a noble pair of steeds drew an empty chariot along the highways of war, for lack of drivers who were lying on the plain, more useful now to vultures than to their wives.